You can spend countless hours exercising but at the end of the day nutrition is a key component to meeting your health and fitness goals. So is nutrition or fitness more important? Well, it depends on your goals, what you’re currently eating, and how much you’re working out.
Good nutrition will help you reach your health and fitness goals but combining it with a well-designed fitness plan will help you reach them faster. Once you reach your goals, exercise and nutrition are both important for maintenance. Some people who come to me are trying to out-exercise their poor nutrition and they are tired of struggling to reach their goals.
If you think this might be you, here are five signs you’re trying to outwork poor nutrition:
- Time: You need to spend more time at the gym to reach your goals and you’re already putting in an hour a day. Let’s face it. As moms and moms-to-be, we don’t have many extra minutes in the day. Our workouts need to be efficient and effective.
- Intensity: You’re continually seeking harder workouts to burn even more calories. A common fitness trend is to make workouts as hard as possible – classes meant to make sure you feel you got your money’s worth through sweat, exhaustion, and burnout. All in a single workout. In reality, you don’t have to completely wear yourself down to have an effective workout. Over time, this can take a toll on your body and it can be difficult to maintain good nutrition when you’re always seeking food to refuel your body.
- Recovery: You’re constantly injured, sore, tired but not meeting your goals. This is usually a result of intensity. I remember a time when I thought it meant I was working hard enough if I was always sore. When my body was actually run down. I was sick more often, not seeing results, and the injuries were ongoing. If this sounds like you, take a look at your workout schedule and see if you can work in a few recovery days!
- Variety: You think if you can find the right type of workout, you’ll finally lose the weight. Do you find yourself jumping to new workouts all year without finishing any of them? Or hoping the next one will finally be the one that works? If the workout program is well designed, it likely isn’t the workout, but rather nutrition. Workout programs should help you break through plateaus.
- Punishment: You head to the gym the day after a party, big dinner, post-dessert, holiday, traveling, simply to reverse ‘the damage’. At the end of the day, you will run out of time, burnout, face injury, or give up before you can out-exercise poor nutrition. Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t make up for an extra dessert or drink here and there, but if you’re constantly overindulging, give your mind and body a break by improving your nutrition.
Not sure where to start? Check out The Lean Mom Program, a 12-week online program designed for the mom who is 1+ year postpartum and ready for a full workout and nutrition routine. At LJW we use evidence-based methods to provide a fat-loss program that is body-positive and sustainable for the busy mom.
